God As Our Sufficiency?

God As Our Sufficiency?

God is to the soul as the sun is to the earth.

Hildegard of Bingen Cited in Mystical Hours

Brother Teasdale gives us his understanding of Hildegard’s view on how we are connected to God in these words:

“… Hildegard is speaking to us from a more personal, mystical context.

As the soul’s sun, God provides us with everything that we need to sustain and encourage our growth– materially, psychologically, aesthetically, spiritually, and morally. At the same time, the Divine sun communicates itself through grace to the soul in a hidden or mystical way. 

There is an entire order of grace at work in the spiritual life that goes beyond the perception of others. As the sun provides so much for the earth, God is the source of everything for the soul.”

The echoes of this spiritually sufficient teaching can be found in a variety of places. 

Most notably to my memory was the statement by St. Theresa, “All I need is God.” Yet, this concept of God providing us with every essential thing for the sake of our souls has been a hard lesson to fully grasp or comprehend. 

In the Sermon on The Mount, Jesus talks about how God meets our needs and cares for us like the lilies and the sparrow, and yet I have to wonder if it is the over-idealism and the piety of these words that cause us such difficulty in believing them!”

Maybe the difficulty for me in accepting this wholeheartedly is the chasm of difference between those urging and holding to such an abiding trust and the sharp, harsh realities of our crass materialistic culture, and its dysfunctional demands for economic survival. 

Maybe it’s my own lack of a richer, more nimble and sustaining faith, or my being prone to expecting that the inflated social needs and being seduced by the standards for happiness we have in our culture…

Regardless of whatever view you might take, the idea that God gives us everything that is necessary remains true on the basic survival level, but in our unrealistically harsh modern society, it is a hard one for me to fully trust or comprehend. 

While it is a far easier task to see how God cares for the soul and even though I can concur that the essence of our humanity is demonstrated by living out those aspirational values and ideals, it is quite another challenge to count on God to pay the rent!

I trust that the answer will be a cooperative one. If, indeed, “All things are possible with God”  then a wholesale transformation of society will be needed!